Prosecutor: France school gunman could strike again

How Toulouse siege unfolded – French Interior Minister Claude Gueant confirms shooting suspect Mohammed Merah is dead after a siege lasting more than 31 hours on Thursday, March 22.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Police and rescue members are pictured after the siege ends on Thursday. Police burst into the apartment of Mohammed Merah, prompting a shootout that ended with Merah, gun in hand, jumping out a window to his death, authorities said Thursday.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Two police officers were injured in the raid, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said. Merah had said he wanted to "die with weapons in his hands.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Merah, 23, was wanted in the killings of three French paratroopers and of three students and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, in a string of shootings that began on March 11.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Merah had told French police that he had trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan's Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, and that he had planned to attack more soldiers and police Wednesday.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Police fired stun grenades at the building every hour through the night Wednesday, but there was no response. French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told CNN the blasts were meant to pressure Merah back into talks with negotiators.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Around 300 police officers surrounded the apartment in Toulouse on Wednesday March 21, during an operation to arrest Mohammed Merah. Authorities say he was a self-styled al Qaeda jihadist.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Local residents are evacuated from the area as police surround the suspect's property on Wednesday. It is believed Mohammed Merah had been under surveillance by French intelligence for years.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday tells representatives of French Jewish and Muslim communities: "We must be united. We must give in neither to discrimination nor revenge."

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – French 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment paratroopers carry the coffin of Abel Chennouf during his funeral at the Montauban cathedral on Wednesday. He was killed in the second attack in Montauban on March 15.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – French policemen stand near the apartment of Mohammed Merah on Wednesday. Interior Minister Gueant said the suspect was a French national of Algerian origin.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – The raid on Mohammed Merah's apartment began at 3:30am local time on Wednesday. Shots rang out from inside the building, wounding two officers, police said.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – The coffins containing the bodies of the victims of the shooting at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, Israel from France on March 20. They were buried in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – A policeman stands guard on Tuesday in front of the Jewish school where four people were killed the day before in Toulouse.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – School children are comforted at the scene of the fatal shooting in Toulouse, France on Monday, March 19.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – French President Nicolas Sarkozy shakes hands with the mayor of Toulouse at the Ozar Hatorah school. Sarkozy flew to Toulouse on Monday, after the school shooting took place. He declared "everything must be done so the killer is arrested."

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Rabbi Rav Gabriel directs families to the scene of the fatal shooting on Monday. France, which has one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe, had 389 reported acts of anti-Semitism in 2011, according to Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Police investigators work at the scene of the crime on Monday. Merah was sentenced 15 times by a Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – Merah was in a Toulouse court February 24 for causing an accident with injuries and driving without a license and was sentenced to a month in jail, his lawyer, Christian Etelin said.

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How Toulouse siege unfolded – A woman places a bouquet of flowers on March 17, at the site where two French soldiers were killed on March 15, in the French city of Montauban.

The gunman who killed 4 at a Jewish school was wearing a camera, the minister says

The suspect in a deadly shooting spree at a Jewish school in France knows he is being hunted and might carry out another attack, Paris Chief Prosecutor Francois Molins warned Tuesday.

He said the killer is "very determined" and has committed premeditated murders, targeting victims based on their race or religion.

"The criminal is anti-Semitic or terrorist," Molins said. "One does not exclude the other."

The shooting on Monday was the third fatal attack on minorities in southwest France in eight days.

The region remains on scarlet alert, the highest level in France, after a teacher and three children -- two of them his own young sons -- were gunned down Monday at Ozar Hatorah, a Jewish school in Toulouse. The other victim, the daughter of the school's director, was killed in front of her father.

In Monday's incident, a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and driving a motor scooter pulled up in front of the Jewish school just before 8 a.m. and started shooting, authorities said. He shot his victims in the head, local journalist Gil Bousquet said.

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The gunman then fled, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said. The same method was used in the earlier soldiers' shootings.

One of the guns used Monday was also used in the killings of French soldiers of North African and Caribbean origin on March 11 and March 15, said Elisabeth Allannic, a spokeswoman for judicial authorities in Paris.

The first victim was a 39-year-old man, shot in Toulouse, while the other two were 24 and 26, according to French authorities.

A court in Paris has opened an investigation into the three killings, under anti-terrorism powers.

It is the first time a scarlet alert has been declared, French media reports say. The status means the state can implement sweeping security measures to guard against an imminent threat of major terrorist attacks.

Measures include increased security at schools, heightened surveillance of Jewish and Muslim sites, restrictions on traffic and access to public buildings, additional police on duty and extra scrutiny of passengers and baggage on public transport, the local Haute-Garonne authorities said Monday in an online statement.

France, with one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe, had 389 reported acts of anti-Semitism in 2011, according to the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, known by the French acronym CRIF.

The group issued a statement saying that while it is too early to determine definitively the motive for the crime, it appears to be a case of anti-Semitism. It called for increased security at places of worship and study as the investigation continues.

Exceptional measures have been put in place to find the suspect as soon as possible, Molins told reporters in Paris. Investigators must verify witness accounts and analyze some 7,800 hours of surveillance footage, he said.

The witness accounts indicate that the criminal is slim and around 1.75 meters tall (5 foot, 9 inches), he said.

All the victims were shot in the head at point-blank range, he added.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant said authorities are investigating the possibility that neo-Nazis may have been behind the attacks.

The gunman wore a camera on his chest during the attack, Gueant told Europe 1 on Tuesday.

The minister said a witness told authorities about the device, but it was not clear whether it recorded the crime, Gueant said.

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France observed a minute of silence in memory of the victims on Tuesday morning, with President Nicolas Sarkozy marking it at a school in Paris.

"This happened in Toulouse, in a religious school, to children from Jewish families, but it could have happened here," he told the students. "It could have been the same assassin. These children are exactly like you."

The bodies of the four victims arrived at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, said an official with the Consistory of Paris, a group representing Jewish communities.

Sarkzoy and Joel Mergui, the president of the Consistory of Paris, were present to receive them.

The bodies were to be flown late Tuesday to Israel and buried Wednesday morning in Jerusalem.

Sarkozy wrote Monday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express his condolences for the loss of the victims, three of whom -- the teacher and his sons -- held dual Israeli-French citizenship.

The teacher was born and raised in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, but pursued his religious studies in Israel. He married and had children before returning to teach at the Toulouse school, the consistory said.

The decision to send the bodies to Israel was made because of their faith rather than their nationality, the consistory said. As practicing Jews, their burial in the birthplace of Judaism ensures that their remains will not be tampered with, it added. Forty percent of French practicing Jews are buried in Israel, the consistory said.

Sarkozy, who is running for re-election, suspended his campaign in light of the wave of violence against minorities.

France has a complex history with the far right.

There has been steady if minority support for the National Front party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen and now led by his daughter, Marine. The senior Le Pen came in second in the 2002 presidential elections, and his daughter is a candidate this year.

Sarkozy himself said in an interview earlier this month that France has too many immigrants.

"Our system of integration is working worse and worse, because we have too many foreigners on our territory and we can no longer manage to find them accommodation, a job, a school," he told France 2 TV on March 6.

Historian and author Patrick Weil told CNN it is likely that public shock over the attacks will calm the campaign rhetoric directed at minorities.

Police in New York, Washington and San Francisco increased patrols of synagogues and Jewish institutions, with New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly citing fears someone might stage a "copy-cat" attack. But he and the city's mayor stressed there was no "specific" intelligence indicating an active threat.